On behalf of our clients Save the Blackwater and the Center for Biological Diversity, we submitted objections to the U.S. Forest Service’s proposed Upper Cheat River Project, which would authorize timber harvesting and proscribed burning on over 4,300 acres of the Monongahela National Forest. The Monongahela encompasses one of the most ecologically diverse areas in the United States and provides habitat for several federally-listed endangered and threatened species, including the threatened Northern long-eared bat (which has been recently proposed for uplisting from threatened to endangered under the Endangered Species Act (ESA)) and the endangered Indiana bat. The Forest Service plans to conduct logging and burning in the watershed of Upper Cheat River. However, the Forest Service's Final Environmental Assessment (EA) for the proposed project fails to seriously consider how the agency's actions may harm the environment, including by contributing to greenhouse gas emissions, contributing to erosion and slope instability, and degrading or destroying the habitat of vulnerable species. Most glaringly, the Forest Service failed to consider any alternatives to the proposed project and in fact, refused to consider the no action alternative, which is required in any environmental analysis under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA). As a result, the Final EA effectively considers the environmental impacts of the project in a vacuum, depriving the agency and the public of the context necessary to meaningfully evaluate whether the purported benefits of the project outweigh the adverse environmental effects. The objections also explain that a full Environmental Impact Statement is required to analyze the Upper Cheat River Project's significant impacts on the Northern long-eared bat. The Forest Service must delay a final decision on the proposed project until it conducts a legally-compliant NEPA process that takes the required hard look at the impacts of the project and its alternatives. A copy of the objections can be found here.

Photo Credit: Kelly Bridges, U.S. Forest Service